While the British military was, in 1982, an entirely professional force, the Argentinian military was not. In a British unit, every officer and enlisted man would be a professional soldier, serving in it as their full-time career. In the Argentinian military, though, the majority of the enlisted men would be conscripts or reservists. Only the officers and NCOs were career soldiers. Most of the conscripts who served in the Falklands were from the classes of 1962 and 1963, making them 18-20 year olds.

Further to this was the system of induction and training. In the Argentinian Army, conscripts served for about ten months, in the year they turned 19. They joined their units in January-February, spent most of their time training, and were released from their units in November-December. Once released from their units, they were part of the reserves, and could be called up again to fight. As the war was fought in April-May 1982, a significant portion of the Argentine forces had only received two to three months of training. The first units to reach the islands, the 25th and 8th Regiments, were composed almost entirely of conscripts. Later units were able to call up reservists to replace their new conscripts, but this was not universally carried out. The 12th Regiment, which fought to defend the airfield at Goose Green, had been one of the last units transferred to the Falklands. Despite this, most its men were new conscripts.

Not all aspects of the Argentinian military worked the same way. The Argentinian marines, like the army, used conscripts for their enlisted men. However, they were inducted every two months throughout the year, rather than the 'all-in, all-out' system of the Army. This meant that none of their conscripts were from the newly inducted class of 1963. The Argentinian Navy used conscripts, but also had regular enlisted seamen. When the Belgrano was sunk, 102 conscripts were killed from a contingent of 408, along with 216 regular enlisted from a contingent of 629. Of the conscripts, 82 were from the class of 1962, and 20 were from the class of 1963.